A blog expanding on the subjects discussed in our movie "Science Sex and the Ladies." We blog critically on a specific intersection of science, sexuality, and feminism; particularly paying attention to how female sexual response is discussed, portrayed, and studied in our culture. So...if you're interested in science, sex, lady stuff, or indie movie making...this is the blog for you.

4.30.2015

I just want to start out by saying that I had to pay 40 stupid dollars for this dumb article that I'm about to summarize in this installment of A Journal Article I Read. It's one that is always referenced in things that want to prove a vaginal orgasm exists, and it's like impossible to find in all my free ways of doing so. I even got a Big Ten college kid to try and get it from their library, and they couldn't get it without paying. I hate paying for that stuff, but I bit the bullet because it had to be read more completely than in abstract form. Ya know though, I have to admit, I was glad I did it. It's kinda got some straight up comic gold in it if you ask me. So here it is, all 40 dollars worth.
(*edit - thanks to some feedback from my very thoughtful friend, Stephanie - I realized I forgot to write the full info here on this article, which includes the year of publication, so here it is. Vaginal erotic sensitivity. Alzate H, Londoño ML. J Sex Marital Ther. 1984 Spring;10(1):49-56.)

Here's the abstract. You can find it HERE (p.s. if you want this, just email me, I'll give you the pdf of this article. No one else should have to pay $40.)

Vaginal erotic sensitivity was investigated in a group of 48 coitally experienced volunteers by means of systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls. It was found that 45 subjects reported erotic sensitivity located in most cases on the upper anterior wall, and of those, 30 (66.7%) either reached orgasm or requested to stop stimulation short of orgasm. This study supports previous findings indicating that the vagina of most women has a zone (or zones) of erotic sensitivity whose appropriate stimulation can lead to orgasm; it does not support, however, the particular location and characteristics of the vaginal erogenous zone described by other authors.

The Basics

The study was conducted in Columbia - the country.

There were 32 women studied who were recruited, mostly by word of mouth through the university circles. They were generally mid 20's to mid 30's and college educated. These women were unpaid.

There were also 16 women recruited "through the good offices of a Madam, with whom one of the authors (HA) is aquainted." HA being the male author. The mean age of these women was roughly the same as the other group, but the average years of education was only 7.1. All of these women are either current or former prostitutes and were paid $16 per examination session.

The male author, Heli Alzate, worked with another researcher, a woman named Maria Ladi Londono. The first 4 non-paid women were examined with both researchers conjointly, 12 other non-paid subjects were examined by both researchers but on separate occasions, then 9 others by the male only and 7 by the female only. It never breaks down which were which, though. All the paid ones were examined but the male only.

The women mostly laid on their back with knees bent on an exam table (although some kept legs straight if it felt more comfortable). The examiner washed his/her hands (good thing, since they clearly didn't use gloves), and inserted a lubed index and/or middle finger into the subjects vagina, and systematically "frictioned" the walls of the vagina. The subject was asked to "indicate the sensations, erotic or other, she was experiencing in the different stimulated zones, and when a region of increasing erotic sensitivity was found, increasingly stronger pressure was applied until either the subject reached orgasm, or requested to stop stimulation, or the examiner decided to stop, or the sensation became stabilized - in which case the exploration of other vaginal zones was continued."

"In order to record more precisely some paid subjects' responses, a second examination was conducted on them." - it never breaks down in the study which ones this happened for though.

Examiner's or subjects' fatigue, time constraints, or painful sensations felt by subject were the reasons for stopping examination in some cases - although in the study it doesn't break down these different reasons for stopping.

They defined orgasm as "the subjective perception of the most intense point in a series of increasingly pleasurable sensations elicited by sexual stimulation." - so basically when the woman said she orgasmed.

Background Info About the Subjects

72.9% of the women had masturbated, all using clitoral stimulation. 91.4% of those reached orgasm always or almost always.

60.4% of them had never or almost never reached coital orgasm

Of the 14 women who said they reached orgasm coitally more than half time, 50% said the most favorable position for climax was straddling the man or rear entry. 14.3% of those said it was missionary.

22.9% "reported the impression of having expelled a fluid through the urethra at the moment of orgasm some time in the past"

Vaginal Sensitivity Reported in Study

93.7% reported vaginal erotic sensitivity. The other 6.3% of women only felt unpleasant or painful sensations.

77.8% reported it as located on the anterior (towards belly) vaginal wall. 33.3% reported erotic response on the lower half of the posterior (towards back) vaginal wall. Very few reported any pleasurable sensation on the cervix or the posterior vaginal fornix (deepest recesses of the vagina).

RESULTS

So, of the 32 non-paid subjects, 4 "let themselves reach orgasm at examination." That's right, folks, let themselves. 12 "requested to stop stimulation short of orgasm." I guess ol' Heli Alzate was assuming there would obviously be an orgasm if they hadn't stopped (see above to remind yourself why they might have stopped), and in 2 cases "the examiner stopped stimulation in what he considered to be plateau phase of the sexual response cycle because he was not certain whether the subject wished to climax." Although, again, I guess there was an assumption that they definitely would have if it continued.

Of the 16 paid subjects, 12 reached orgasm at first examination. 1 "requested to stop stimulation short of orgasm because she felt embarrassed" Another one couldn't reach orgasm at first examination, but "climaxed easily at second examination." Am I the only one imagining that last woman sitting around talking about this Heli Alzate dude with other gals the next morning during coffee, and she tells them she didn't "orgasm" and they're all like, "What?! Just do it. I had like 3 'orgasms.' and he LOVED it. He's not going to pay you for that easy ridiculous job again if you don't." And, she's like, "Yeah, I guess you're right," and then she "orgasms" real good for him at the next session. Just me?

Of the women who "either reached orgasm by stimulation of the vaginal walls or gave indications that they would if the stimulation had been continued (N=30)," 73.3% - reported maximal response zone on upper half of anterior (facing belly) wall of vagina, 26.7% on lower half of anterior wall, and 30% lower half of posterior (facing back) wall. That's more than 100% because some women reported more than one.

82.3% of the 17 women who reached orgasm during the exam did so twice or more during the session.

The researchers also do a little test to check for the Rube-Goldberg situation of indirect clitoral stimulation that Masters and Johnson indicate causes orgasm during intercourse for some women (the penis pulls on the labia, which pulls on the clitoral hood, which rubs against the clitoris). For 6 paid subjects who easily reached orgasm during the exams (see - easily having an orgasm pays in this study - another exam and another $16!), "The examiner rhythmically stimulated the lower third of the vagina with his index and middle fingers, mimicking the movements of the penis during coitus, and for the time required to elicit an orgasm by stimulation of the vaginal erogenous zone. Although a clear traction on the labia minora was evident, all subjects felt only a slight to moderate erotic sensation, which either became stabilized or decreased at the end of the stimulation period." So they were skeptical of this.

There is a paragraph describing how the subjects, especially the non-paid ones felt positive about the experience and learning about their bodies, and then it goes on to say, "The quality of the vaginal erotic sensation was variably described by the subjects: Some likened it to that produced by coitus; others found the sensation unlike coital or clitoral stimulation; a few likened it to that felt during clitoral stimulation. several subjects reported initial anxiety and tension, especially when examined by the male researcher. Those who were examined by both authors agreed that the pressure applied by the male examiner was stronger than that applied by the female examiner."

"As expected, the paid subjects were significantly less inhibited at examination than the nonpaid ones, judging from their greater ease to let the stimulation go until orgasm."

They say that it doesn't seem likely that intercourse is a good way to elicit orgasm since a strong pressure at a particular angle is needed, which is best done by fingers, although doggy style, might be the best intercourse option to get the job done. They also doubt the high incidence of female ejaculation reported in the then recently released book, The G-Spot and Other Recent Discoveries in Human Sexuality. However, they imagine that maybe since 22.9% of the women they studied claim to have had that experience that ability may exist in a minority of women.

Orgasms?

All the orgasms in this study were elicited by the male researcher only. He "could not perceive any emission of fluid through the urethra accompanying them." He also couldn't, "perceive any clonic contractions of the perineal musculature at the time of orgasm, but in a few cases he perceived a rather tonic one." In other words, he specifically never felt the rhythmic contractions of the pelvic muscles that identify orgasm in males and females, but in a few women he felt the muscle tense and stay tensed. (He did note one or more physical signs of arousal in all the women).

Granted, this dude's fingers are not a highly sensitive measuring device for pelvic muscle contractions, and so this should be considered in that light, but it seems unlikely that an orgasm was actually, physically happening for any of these women. It also doesn't seem that an ejaculation was happening. If there was any physical thing happening to these women at the time they said they were orgasming, it was likely something wildly different and yet unidentified...but that's not how the researchers see it.

"The absence of rhythmic contractions of the perineal musculature, even when the subjects were experiencing particularly intense orgasms, runs counter to Masters and Johnson's model of female sexual response." So, it's not that these women weren't orgasming. It's that the whole understanding of female orgasm is wrong? Well, maybe. I guess one possibility is that despite the findings in the largest human sexual response study that yet exists Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Response), it is still never the less somehow true that for women, but not men, "orgasm" can be something else entirely than what was consistently identified. It can be something, nay anything, that is happening when a woman says she is having an orgasm - even if there is no physical thing happening...Or - just hear me out - maybe that's quite a silly way to think about it. Maybe as scientific study has shown us up to this point, there is a thing called an orgasm in both men and women, and sometimes that occurs and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe when women say they are experiencing orgasm, they were actually experiencing something else, something that isn't an orgasm and should either have a different name or simply not be misidentified as an orgasm. Maybe it was a high level of arousal, a mental or spiritual climax. And then, maybe, just maybe, sometime the orgasms were just plain faked, either very intentionally or kinda non-intentionally just because they felt they were expected to so they did it.

My Thoughts

Okay, so real quick, let me just recap. A dude pays some prostitutes associated with a madam he's "acquainted with" to take part in a "study" where he uses his bare hand to try and make them come on multiple occasions where he pays them each time, and most of them say they do come - multiple times in fact. They don't actually exhibit the physical markers of orgasm, but he assumes that just means that the research so far about lady-gasm is wrong instead of questioning whether these women were just doing what prostitutes get paid to do - make the client happy. In this case, maybe that is telling him that they orgasmed, confirming that he's right about his hypothesis that he can make ladies come if only they will let themselves (I mean, for all they know this was a dude's weird kink and not a study at all).

Can we just back up to the unpaid women also? Is it possible that our dear researcher made these women come less because, well, they may not have been approaching the situation as a paid prostitute. I think this thought should have at least been considered in the discussion of the study instead of going straight to the hypothesis that the prostitutes were just "significantly less inhibited at examination than the nonpaid ones, judging from their greater ease to let the stimulation go until orgasm."

Also...So the actual percentage of women who claimed to reach orgasm is 35.4% of total (17 of 48 women studied), 12.5% of the unpaid and a whopping 81% of the paid subjects. However, the researchers use the number of women who either reached orgasm by stimulation of the vaginal walls or gave indications that they would if the stimulation had been continued. That is 14 out of 16 paid and 16 of the 32 unpaid - and they take that from the 45 women who said they felt erotic sensitivity in the vagina (not out of the 48 total subjects) to get the 66.7% of women who reached orgasm or requested to stop short of orgasm in the abstract. So, the numbers thrown out in the abstract are a bit misleading.

Anyway, this study and the conclusions others seem to draw from it are a hot mess in my opinion. It is not a blind study. The researchers who took the data and did the exams are the same who decided on the results. There's lots of room for bias. The examiner clearly had a hypothesis that he hoped would work out and that may very well have been reflected to some degree in his subjects. It also doesn't actually show that vaginal stimulation can cause M&J defined orgasm at all as is often purported. It specifically points to that not being the case. It's also highly suspect whether the orgasms reported were actually anything physical at all. The stimulation seemed to cause arousal in women, but not a M&J orgasm or even any other specific physical quality (besides maybe the few women the researcher felt as tensing and staying tense). It boggles my mind that the thought of faked orgasms was not even uttered. This is a scientific study and all possible conflicts should be considered. That this possibility was not considered is telling.

4.28.2015

I'm not making excuses (I actually am making excuses), but I haven't posted the last couple days because I got home from my 3 months of day-job science business in Brazil on Saturday (no more Brazilian breakfast buffets and living in a hotel, no!!!), and I had to pack up and move out of my house beginning immediately (movin' closer into the city!).

It's been a little insane the last couple days, and on top of all that, SSL got a kick-ass article at Alternet Saturday morning, and then it got picked up by Salon on Monday. Jill Hamilton wrote the article - you might know her from a blog called In Bed With Married Women. It's funny as shit. I would check it out if I were you. I can't thank her enough for seeing this crazy as doc, and wanting to write about on some established, motha fuckin' sites. I mean Salon and Alternet are kinda bigtime for this mom n' pops deal we got goin on here. It upped our Vimeo and IndieFlix views, well, a lot, and we got tons of emails about small screenings, and other fun shit. Point is, all that stuff made having to move in weather far colder than I am now accustomed, after almost no sleep during a 20 our travel period much, much more exciting that it would have been. But, seriously, my seat would not go back even slightly on the 8 hour flight from Sau Paulo to Miami, and that sucked. I never have trouble sleeping on planes...or in classes...or in cars...or standing up, but I couldn't sleep at all, and there were only like 6 movies available - I had only not seen Taken 3.

That was my Brazilian bathroom, complete with Portuguese flashcards on the mirror.

There was some good comment threads on the Alternet one. I always have to get my hands in there. I can't have random nay-saying comments hanging out there that can easily be answered and talked about civilly. So, that took up some time too, but it was fun. I'll do a post on those comments soon. Someone told me they wished I'd just shut up - she was a bit fighty, that one. Now, that would normally make my stomach turn into knots, but it doesn't anymore. I think I've grown, my friends. I just try to be nice and honest, and usually people are back, but when they're not, no biggie. I leaned that I've gained that ability this weekend, so that's another good thing to have come of all this.

Back to work...Go check out the Alternet and the Salon posts. It'll be fun.

4.22.2015

I came across a blog that I thought might be a fun one for you to read. Plus, it's got that Orgasm Equality flair I love and need to share. You should go read it HERE. It's at Reticulated Writer, and it's called, "No Thanks, I'll Just Lick It Myself," a great name if ever I heard one. It begins with her distaste of the sound of her dog licking its balls and ends by asking the ladies out there if they would lick their own clits (I mean if it were possible and all). Obviously, my answer is yes. Clit-licking is just plain the bee's knees, the cat's meow, even!

Or is it?

Anyway, in her musings, she also gets all real - Orgasm Equality style real. I love it. There are not enough people out there talking about the big ol' elephant in the room when it comes to lady-gasms, the elephant being that our vaginas don't make us orgasm. It begins with her realization that there's lots of talk and jokes and questions about men sucking their own dicks if they could, but there's just not much of that for us ladies.

And then as I sat in church I wondered, Why hasn't anybody ever asked me if I would lick my clit if I could? Why hasn't anybody ever asked me if I can lick my own clit?

Why indeed. I like that she touches on something important. Men have a lot of culture around their authentic (not faked) orgasm, their drive to attain orgasm, and their methods of auto-manipulating it. Women have very little culture around those things.

But I want to know why isn't the interest in autofellatio matched by an equal interest in autocunnilingis? Even the Wikipedia entry for autoeroticism only refers to men dick-licking. Nothing about women clit-licking. I call shenanigans.

I agree with her call of shenanigans, and I agree with the next part of her post even more.

...and then after church I had a conversation with my friend Martini about why women have fewer orgasms than men. If you're thinking it's because women's orgasms are harder to come by (pun intended), then you would be wrong. Our bits work just fine, thank you, but the relevant bits aren't found in our vaginas, so the penis isn't usually the right tool for the job. (I know there's that one woman -- the one the rest of us women all secretly hate -- who's thinking, I come with every penetration. I have an orgasm when I insert a tampon. Good for you, bitch. Now go sit in the corner. This conversation isn't for you.)

No, the reasons are many, and most of them boil down to men's orgasms being more important than women's.

I couldn't agree more. Now, men as a whole aren't to blame, and women as a whole aren't to blame. Even "the man" can't be blamed, but the truth is she's right. Our sexual culture is built in a way that prizes male orgasm over female orgasm. To quote Billy Joel (because I know you want me to), "We didn't start the fire. It's been burning since the world's been turnin'" We can put that shit out though - Go Orgasm Equality!

Also, I wouldn't say orgasming from a tampon makes you a bitch, but she's right, this conversation isn't for you or the minority of women who claim in surveys to be like you. It's for the majority of women who we find, from surveys, that say they have never orgasmsed from vaginal stimulation. Ladies like this don't get to see women like themselves anytime they want in porn and movies the way you do. They need some space for their reality too, ya know. Oh, and I'm saying this in all seriousness. Search for some orgasm research studies that will physically verify your vaginally induced orgasms. These have actually never been verified in scientific literature, and if this is your experience, it should be documented. Seriously. It's crazy that there is a minority of women who claim this experience but it has never been verified. This shit needs to be cleared up.

Okay, that's the deal. Check out the Orgasm Equality infused post at Reticulated Writer, and let her know if you would lick your own junk. Again, I would. I definitely would.

P.S. I wrote autocunnilingus into Google and clicked on images to find a picture for this blog. I think it is possible - at least in photoshop.

4.18.2015

I've been thinking a lot about reactions to Science, Sex and the Ladies. There are, from time to time, some very loud and adamant people that just don't like that I say, in my movie and in this blog, that it is a reasonable possibility that orgasms caused by stimulation inside the vagina actually aren't a thing. There are plenty of others who are intrigued and excited that I'm saying this, and I feel there are also a lot of people that just feel kinda uncomfortable with what I'm saying, maybe preferring to just stay out of any real debate on the issue. My point of view is not a normal one in the current talking/advising/researching about female orgasm world. It steps clearly out of an anything-anyone-feels-and-says-is-okay-cause-sex-is-so-diverse-and-personal vibe that I see as pretty prominent in our current progressive sexual culture. The SSL ideas sit strangely at a place that feels too radical for the overall sexual culture and too restricting for the progressive sexual culture. They commit the ultimate feminist sin and question the validity of some claims women make about their own bodies, and they poke at a hornet's nest by continuing a debate that a lot of people want to ignore and gloss over.

At the same time, the SSL movie and this blog also support all kinds of fairly comfortable and familiar things that are easy for anyone, especially progressive feminist and sex activists, to get behind; things about better sexual education, masturbation advocacy, and reducing rape culture. So, I think it might be hard for people to dissect their feelings about it because it's a lot, and it's a mix of the familiar and foreign, the harshly controversial and the obviously progressive, and it's about a topic that is deeply personal and deeply a part of a person's being. So, I know that in a lot of ways, I'm fighting an uphill battle that people don't really feel like fighting, and I know that things I say can be prickly and feel harsh, but I believe that these things need to be said.

I believe that women are terribly disadvantaged in the sexual culture, and there is barely any acknowledgement of the incredible scope and depth and reach of this inequality. However, I think women do feel that disadvantage deep in their bones and react to it, both publicly and privately, without really understanding where it is coming from. I see so many women express the disappointment, and hurt, and anger that comes from this in all kinds of diverse ways, but I also see that there is barely a vocabulary for this and certainly not any kind of united front for change. It is all-encompassing and invisible at the same time. When it is recognized to some degree, it is approached more as personal problems than deep cultural wrongs, and thus it doesn't seem that important. It is important though, and if we as a culture don't start scrutinizing our deeply held beliefs and assumptions about female sexuality, then there will be no change. To me, this starts with the female orgasm, and the incredible non-truths about it that permeate our media, our personal relationships, and our scientific inquiries. The non-truths are so deep that they feel like truths, and that's what makes any activism on this issue so hard but also so important - because change won't just happen on it's own. Our sexual culture and our sexual assumptions needs to be shoved into reality, and getting shoved can hurt.

So that said, let me just speak on the 2 main things people seem to be most bothered by in relation to the activism in the SSL movie and the blog.

No One Cares About Clit vs. Vag Orgasms Anymore!
For those who think making a distinction between vaginal and clitoral orgasms is silly given that the modern, progressive view in the talking/advising/researching-about-female-orgasm-world is that all orgasms are clitoral, no matter if they come from direct stimulation on the clitoral glans or through penetration only: To that I say, I get that you are coming from a place of let's-just-all-get-along, but the truth is we still need to talk about this because only the specific words in this argument have changed over the years. The base of it is still the same as it has always been. It still assumes that there is an orgasm that comes from stimulation of the vagina, and that needs to be challenged.

There are orgasms that happen from some type of direct or indirect stimulation of the outer clitoral/vulva areas. They are uncontroversial, scientifically documented, and seemingly all healthy female bodies are capable of them. Then there is orgasms that happen from some type of stimulation on the inside of the vagina. It doesn't matter if people tell us they think the stimulation point for orgasm involves the g-spot or some aspect of the vaginal wall or some pressing/crushing/indirect stimulation of the inner legs of the clitoris through the vaginal walls (as is the hip modern way to view it). In the end, these orgasms all happen without any stimulation of the outer clitoral vulva area. The seemingly "progressive" idea that they might be caused by some type of inner clitoral leg stimulation doesn't change that, and honestly doesn't really have any more evidence to support it than the idea that they happen because of a distinct g-spot or through sensitive tissue on the anterior wall of the vagina. It's all just conjecture - speculating about the cause of an orgasm that has not, even with all the studies that speculate about it, yet been physically identified. This hypothetical, yet widely believed-in, type of orgasm is controversial, undocumented, and most women do not even claim to have ever had one.

I don't think there is anything silly or unnecessary about trying to clear up confusing, misleading information about how women can realistically achieve orgasm. Simply saying that "it's all clitoral" unfortunately doesn't make it all clear, and I think as a society we can and should begin trying to make this more clear.

I'm an Asshole That Calls Women Liars!
The other huge no-no I commit is that I dare to say that orgasm caused only by stimulation of the vagina might not exist even though I know good and well there are some women who say they experience this. Here's the thing. In a study, asking people what they did is very different than witnessing it. Just because a woman says on a survey that she has orgasms through vaginal stimulation alone or just because a friend earnestly says the same thing, doesn't mean that it's true. It seems very un-feminist and arrogant to say that, I know. I leave you to decide how much you hate me for this, but I can assure you my intentions are not to shame women or discount women's experiences of their own bodies. However, my intention is definitely to point out that there are HUGE problems with accepting women (or anyone) at their word about an experience this fraught with expectation, ignorance, and misconception, when it is absolutely possible to physically check when this experience occurs. It's not like we have to live in the dark. There is a physical reaction that is accepted as orgasm in both men and women, and we can check whether it happens or not. It has been done many times and can be done again. Yet it's not happening. If there is a woman out there who has experienced this, we haven't proved it yet. I have no doubt women certainly have the experiences they say they have, but just because they use the word "orgasm" doesn't mean that they physically had the rhythmic release of muscle tension and blood congestion that is uncontroversially known to be an orgasm.

You see what I'm saying? There's this idea the female orgasm is some complicated, wildly varied thing when it actually isn't any more complicated than the male orgasm

My reason for questioning survey results about women's ability to vaginally orgasm goes beyond the fact that science has not actually yet been able to validate those responses. There is also the matter of our culture's unwillingness to define orgasm for women. Even in peer reviewed journal articles, researchers often claim that the female orgasm has not been defined, and there are lots of ways to experience it. I take strong issue with that (and I go into that in a debate HERE), but point is, how can we expect women to answer whether or not they have experienced something when that something is not really defined? Is one woman answering what she perceives as a completely different question from another women? On top of that, can we just take a minute to consider how growing up and living in a sexual culture where the most common, expected, most depicted type of sexual interaction is one that does not cause orgasm in at least 70% of women (although I would guess that number is much more if not all). Mix that with the mushiness of the word "orgasm" and the cultural obsession with intercourse as the most common and accepted way to experience sexual interactions, and what does that lead to? Might women feel a strong and often unconscious pressure to orgasm from intercourse; a pressure that changes and molds them in a variety of ways, some of which might lead them to say they experience something or even truly feel they experience something that they actually don't? Further more, let's consider how female orgasm is modeled. In porn the male orgasms are largely real, and the female orgasms, even the very realistic ones, are largely fake, but not always thought of as faked. Porn is the easiest and safest way to experience what sex is and should be like without having to partake in it. Could it be possible, even slightly, that this situation might model for women a sexual experience, somewhat unconsciously, in which displaying orgasmic movements and vocalizations at particular moments in a sexual situation is the orgasm? I know that sounds strange, but just roll that around in your head for a while. I'm not saying that women are intentionally faking orgasm. I'm not saying that there is no pleasure in the situation I just described, but I am saying that it is not an orgasm. That way of experiencing sex for a woman is regularly modeled and idolized in our culture, and it might be how some women actually experience "orgasm."

I think when one steps back and looks at what is happening in our sexual culture, how complicated and messy our relationships are to the female orgasm, how strong the pressures related to ladygasms are in our culture, how much misinformation is out there, how bad our models for ladygasm are, and how ridiculously undefined the word "orgasm" is for women, does it really seem that crazy to wonder if we are not getting completely accurate answers from women when we ask about orgasm? It's at least worth gently considering, can we agree on that?

What If, Though?
Let me end with this. If my crazy ol' mean sounding assertion is true - that women don't orgasm from vaginal stimulation, then what would that mean for female sexuality? Seriously, at least take a moment to even slightly consider what that could mean. The investigation of the implications of that possibility is actually what Science, Sex and the Ladies is all about. Like I said above, I don't think the implication of that is a small thing at all. I think that the deep, wide, largely invisible disadvantage this creates for women in our sexual culture colors all (I mean all - men and women, gay, straight, and trans) of our understandings, expectations, and experiences around sex in varying degrees and styles. I think this predicament is further twisted because men's sexuality grows up so differently. For men the most culturally normal, most commonly depicted, mostly highly prized way of orgasming matches what their bodies are actually capable of. This creates a vast difference between how men and women experience the sexual culture, but the vastness of that difference is rarely understood or recognized. It's part of the invisibility of this problem, but I think the possibilities of how this difference can unnecessarily complicate lives, sexuality, and relationships is staggering.

I know it's uncomfortable, but I really believe we need to do some shoving. This ain't gonna work itself out.

4.14.2015

Today, ladies and gentlemen, in "A Journal Article I Read," I will be going over an article about distance from vagina to clit and its relationship to a lady's ability to orgasm during intercourse. Take a quick peak at the abstract.

In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile-clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse.

Super Summary Of My Thoughts
For those who don't like to read too much, here's my super quick take. I think this is a truly useful study in that it takes a popular assumption about clit-vag distance and its relationship to getting banged into an orgasm and digs into as much concrete information on it as can be found. I'm very glad it exists. I think it is fair and not overreaching when it investigates the raw data of the 2 studies, and its conclusion that they show a correlation between CUMD and the ability to orgasm during intercourse seems fair enough and definitely worth duplication experiments, follow-up studies, and further discussion.

However, the last sentence of the abstract about prenatal androgen exposure is, in my oh-so-humble opinion, overreaching. The authors themselves said there was no direct evidence of CUMD differences in women being caused by prenatal androgen exposure. It was a hypothesis taken from a couple experiments in other animals. Also the only real indication (thus far) that CUMD is correlated with orgasm ability during intercourse are the conclusions these authors made from reanalyzing these 2 70-year old studies that include less than 100 participants between them and some problematic aspects to the data. So to put those two shakey assertions together and say that " women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse," is a big stretch.

Also, there is the ever lurking problem of researchers assuming that there is an orgasm that occurs through vaginal stimulation alone. As I always point out, the only evidence of this is women saying that they have experienced this. There is no physical evidence. None have ever been observed in a lab, and we really (I mean we really do) need to settle that this orgasm-from-vaginal-stimulation thing is even an actual thing before we start trying to find mechanisms for how it might work, as this article attempts to do. ***Seriously, researchers from all over the sex researching fields, can we just at least minimally acknowledge that this lack of evidence for a vaginally induced orgasm is troubling...I mean you don't have to say you doubt its existence, but for god's sake let's just put some thought into why the hell there isn't any, and how some evidence could be attained...seriously, it's getting ridiculous.

Summary of Background in this Article
The article starts out telling us that, basically, most men orgasm during intercourse and most women don't and that there is diversity in women's ability to orgasm - specifically during intercourse.

"Post-pubertal males routinely, and apparently easily, experience orgasm, as indicated by their reliable ejaculatory reflex, but female orgasm appears to develop less quickly and is less predictable than male orgasm." -p. 781

As I mentioned above only the first 2 of that list of possible ways for women to orgasm has any actual physical evidence to support the claim (and it always surprises me that this is not mentioned more clearly in scholarly works). However, none the less there is certainly a cultural feeling that all 4 of those options exist, and also that women have a diverse sets of abilities for orgasm, so I guess that in itself makes it worth investigating.

They also point out that there is a marked difference between males and females as to whether they orgasm during intercourse always, nearly always, often, sometimes, rarely, or never.

"In men, the distribution has a single sharp peak centered on "always" or "nearly always"...by contrast, the women's distribution is relatively flat across categories with an elevation in the middle and smaller frequencies at the endpoints of "never" and "always" (Lloyd 2005). - p.781

The authors tell us that the reason for the variability in women's ability to orgasm is unknown but often theorized about. For instance, Freud said it had to do with psychological development i.e. immature=clitoral, mature=vaginal/during intercourse. The authors rightly point out that although this has no evidence and is somewhat silly, there are plenty of people (including researchers published in peer reviewed journals) still promoting that to this day. the also pointed out the following things:

that data about women orgasming during intercourse is a bit messy and often does not distinguish between intercourse with and without concurrent clitoral stimulation.

but even so, the amount of women who report orgasmimg from intercourse is still clearly under 30%.

that one going line of thought is that all orgasms are clitoral, in that even orgasms attained during intercourse without concurrent clitoral stimulation are actually indirectly stimulating the clitoris ***I would like to take a minute to point out that the authors didn't go into another subtle, but important sub topic here. There are some who would say that stimulation of something inside the vagina (possibly some indirect stimulation of the inner clitoral legs or of the "g-spot") is one way that women can orgasm "clitorally" but during intercourse. This, contrary to popular belief, has never been observed and is as of yet only a theory. Others, including myself, would say that the stimulation during intercourse causing indirect stimulation to the clitoris must be indirect stimulation to the clitoral glans area. The mechanism for orgasms happening this way have been observed. All indications are that these are rare, and result in a less intense orgasm than an orgasm that includes direct clitoral stimulation for the women who have them.

that the distance between the clitoral glans and the vagina may be an indicator as to which women have orgasms during intercourse and which do not. They base this possibility on the results of three old studies.

The Old Clit-Vag distance Studies!

The first was an analysis in 1924 by a woman named Marie Bonaparte (who used the pseudo-name Narjani). She, herself, could orgasm but not during intercourse and thought it might be because her clit was too far from her vagina. She compared the vag-clit distance (CUMD) in women to their instance of orgasming during intercourse and came to the conclusion that there was a link between a short clit-vag distance and ability to orgasm. Bonaparte actually worked with a surgeon and went through a procedure to move her clit closer to her vagina. It didn't work, but she went on and had it 2 more times. It still didn't work, and it also didn't work for the 4 or 5 other women who also had the procedure. She became a student of Freud's in 1927 and later said her original analysis was wrong and that the problem was probably a psychological one. She pointed out that there were women in her study with a long CUMD who could orgasm during intercourse and vice-versa.

The second was Dickinson, a gynocologist in 1933. He actually didn't publish a study on this topic, but he did have data for it on 200 women. He briefly mentioned it in his 1933 book "Atlas of Human Sexual Anatomy." He said there was no connection between CUMD and ability to orgasm during intercourse, but cited no data except that, like Bonaparte, he found woman with long CUMD who could orgasm during intercourse and vice-versa.

The third was Carney Landis along with his wife Agnus and an associate Marjorie Bowles. They reported on CUMD and the occurrence of orgasm during intercourse. They used 142 mentally ill patients and 153 non-mentally ill patients. Of the 153 non-mentally ill patients, they presented data for only 44 married women in the study with only 37 having a complete data set. In addition, they only minimally analyzed their data. So, although they claimed there was a significant correlation between low CUMD and ability to orgasm during intercourse, it's not super conclusive.

More Stuff This Paper Says That You Should To Know

"Regardless of the lack of analytical detail in all these studies, the notion that the placement of the clitoris in relation to the vagina affected orgasm response had a popular distribution and was presented as a settled fact by authors of "marital sex manuals" of the era as well as being presented in other publications over the last 80 years." -p783

The authors go on to cite many times when this occurs and then let us know that they have gotten access to the raw data for both the Bonaparte (stats on 43 married woman) and the Landis study (stats on 44 married women) and have assessed them using modern statistical analysis.

I'm not a statistics wiz, so if there are things in their analysis to be criticized or given accolades, I'm not the one to do it. They seem to be open about their methods, so if you are interested in what they did, check out the paper. I can give you a quick idea of some of their challenges with the data sets, though.

From Bonaparte's data about her measuring specifications

Bonaparte measured from basically the underside of the clit down to the vagina. She had clear notes about how her measurements were done. Landis didn't have clear notes about how measurements were done, but it seems as if they were done from on the clit down, given context clues and that they were all slightly larger than Bonaparte]s. It didn't cause a problem in the stat within each study, but it made it harder to combine the two sets of stats.

Bonaparte did both the measuring and the questioning - so bias could abound. In the Landis study, it seemed that the gynocologist who took the measurements was blind to the questionnaire the patients were given which is a bit better as bias goes.

It is not certain that the Landis study discerned between women who did or did not have additional clitoral stimulation during intercourse orgasms. 2 subjects were dropped from the modern analysis, though because they described themselves as "helping their orgasm along" which could possibly mean adding some additional clitoral stimulation.

Bonapart basically asked if the woman can or cannot orgasm through intercourse with no extra clitoral stimulation. It is assumed from context she clearly made a distinction between orgasm during intercourse with and without extra clitoral stimulation. Technically the question she asked, however, was if the respondent "had a normal reaction during sexual intercourse."

The Landis study had a more comprehensive set of questions with the one we're interested in asking,

"How long have you been married or how long have you been having relations before you experienced your first satisfactory orgasm with your current husband? Do you usually experience a climax or orgasm when you are have intercourse? About what proportion of the time do you fail to experience it, i.e. about how many times out of ten?" -p. 784-785

So, one (Bonaparte) is a yes/no and the other (Landis) has a percentage of times out of ten a woman orgasms that is coded to rarely=10%, sometimes=30%, often=60%, usually=80%, and almost always=90%.

The Results Were:

A
Bonaparte's women who answered "yes" to orgasming during intercourse had on average lower CUMD than the women who said "no" - the difference was deemed statistically significant.

B
The women in the Landis study who reported intercourse orgasms 66% of the time or more had on average lower CUMD than the women who experienced intercourse orgasm less than 66% of the time or not at all - the difference was deemed statistically significant.

C
The women in the Landis study who reported any instances of intercourse orgasms had on average a lower CUMD than the women who never experienced intercourse orgasm - but this difference was only deemed "near significant" and "the corresponding effect size was moderate."

D
The average CUMD difference shown in A (above) was greater than that found in B (above). The combination of results A and B also showed significant difference between CUMD of women who orgasmsed regularly (above 66% of the time in Landis study and "yes" answers in Bonapartes study) and those who did not (Bonaparte's "no" answers and Landis' 66% and below answers).

E
Bonaparte had data on 33 women about ability to experience orgasm through masturbation. In this case there was no statistically significant difference between CUMD of women who could and could not do so.

There were also a lot of other statistical measures they dug in to, including things like discrimination functions and the ability to predict, better than chance, a woman's ability to orgasm from intercourse based on her CUMD. Feel free to look them up on your own, but from what I could understand, it seems that there was some better and worse predictability surrounding this depending on what kind of calculations were used, but that in general the authors of this paper felt that the results were positive for identifying a link between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse.

Discussion
The discussion of the data goes over the problems that could occur from the issues stated above. It also points out that they feel the results of 2 different studies, despite their problems, still suggest that there just might be a correlation between CUMD and ability to orgasm during intercourse. However, they also rightly point out that this correlation still doesn't actually say anything about what the mechanism is that could cause a lower CUMD to allow for greater ability to orgasm during intercourse. They do put out some ideas though.

"Although the notion of pelvic or penile stimulation of the clitoral glans or shaft is intuitively appealing and is consistent with the data presented here, short CUMD, instead of being the actual mechanism creating orgasm in intercourse, could be an external marker of other processes producing increased vaginal sensitivity that increases the likelihood of orgasm solely from sexual intercourse." - p. 789

Their point being that if low CUMD really does signify an ability to orgasm from intercourse, maybe it's not the obvious situation in which the outer parts of the clit get touched more while getting banged. Maybe it is that the low CUMD merely indicates something about the inner parts of the lady junk that make intercourse orgasms possible. Particularly, they wonder if the inner legs of the clitoris might be packed in a little tighter in low CUMD women and if this allows a penis to push on the clitoral legs, through the vagina, more than in high CUMD women. If this were true then, they tell us, their theory here supports a vaginal-to-inner-clitoral type of stimulation as causing orgasm, and this is much more similar to the traditional idea of a "vaginal" orgasm since it involves no stimulation of the outer parts of the clit at all.

Of course the main problem here is that an orgasm of this type, one that only relies on stimulation of the inside of the vagina, has never been observed. Currently, the only thing that indicates the existence of such an orgasm is that women say they have had them, so to me the very existence of such a thing should be examined before we try to find possible mechanisms for how they happen. This truth about our current knowledge of what causes orgasm in women reveals statements in this article, like the one below which takes as fact that there is a natural occurrence of women who can orgasm through vaginal stimulation even when there is simply no real data to support that, as way overreaching.

"Both types of orgasm induction occur naturally in women, with orgasms induced by direct stimulation of the clitoral glans or shaft being more common than those induced by vaginal stimulation." - p. 790

Prenatal Androgen Exposure, Maybe?
Using the medical understanding of how the genitals of boys and girls are formed in the womb, the authors theorize that a longer CUMD might have "had their clitoral migration arrested later in embryonic development" and thus could have their clitoris positioned in a place a bit more like the penis and possibly have sensitivity distributed more like males. Strangely, Bonaparte was actually the one that posited the above back in 1924. It is quite a modern way of understanding embryology, and the authors take this a bit further and say this is consistent with "the notion that women with higher CUMD have been exposed to higher levels of prenatal androgen than have women with smaller distances." They go on to point out there is no direct evidence for this connection between prenatal androgens and CUMD in women, but discuss studies in rats that point to the possibility that their could be.

The authors also theorize the following:

"Women who are exposed to higher levels of prenatal androgens may not only have a more male-like rostral clitoral location, but also their clitoral eroticism may be more similar to that of the penis. Thus, increased prenatal androgen exposure may focus erotic sensitivity to the clitoral shaft and glans, reducing or eliminating erotic sensitivity in the bulbs and bodies of the clitoris. In this view, all women possess erotic sensitivity in the clitoral shaft and glans, but only women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens retain significant erotic sensitivity in the internal clitoral structures." p.790

I think that they are more open inside the article that their hypothesis about androgen exposure being connected to CUMD being connected to ability to orgasm during intercourse without extra clitoral stimulation is just that - a hypothesis. The evidence to support this is as yet flimsey at best, but it's a sensible hypothesis given the data they have, and should be investigated further. In the abstract for this article, though, that hypothesis is stated more like a fact they uncovered, and that's a little troubling
.The End
They end the article by saying that there are plenty of good studies that could come from this possible correlation between CUMD and ability for women to orgasm during intercourse. They are absolutely correct. I would love to see some really good studies to investigate this. It, as they point out, may shed some light on the variability in women's ability to orgasm. I completely agree. My only worry is that other studies will take for granted, as this study has done, a position that should not be taken for granted - that vaginally stimulated orgasms actually exist. Women saying they have experienced these is only an indication that they might exist. It is not proof that they do, and we need to get some proof.

4.10.2015

We have another Review - at Rogue Cinema. Check it out HERE. Thanks to Misty Layne for taking the time to watch and write about it. It's a good review, but I'll be honest. It says something we hear about this movie more than I'd like - "I'm not sure who the audience for this documentary is." I've heard it before, and it always feels like an unnecessary questions to me. I always want to say something like - Did you like it? Then you are the audience. However, I have learned since making this movie, that it does matter to people. Categorizing a movie, and thus categorizing the audience who might watch the movie, makes a big difference, and we probably should have done a better job filling in the details for what box people should fit SSL into with our marketing. We should be telling them, so they don't have to spend any precious time worrying about it. So, I'll address that a little - in my own way, here.

I always knew the movie was hard to categorize. It's a non-fiction movie, but documentary doesn't quite describe it. It's really off-beat with lots of cheese, but not quite the kind of cheese people are used to seeing in their documentaries - the wink and nod to the innocence of the 50's with some cheesy b-roll of a black and white educational film reel featuring shiny happy housewives doing something that seems quaint and silly or with men in suits talking directly to the camera.

those silly ol' 50's housewives! What were those 50's people thinking?!

Crazy ol' educational video narrators! So ridiculous, huh?!

You know what i mean, right? - the kind of b-roll featured in all kinds of docs, but especially Micheal Moore docs and all the other docs styled like Micheal Moore docs. Anyway, it's not that SSL doesn't have some 50's Housewives and dudes in suits talking directly to the camera. We definitely do. It's just that ours is not random B-roll, thrown in here and there. It's our actual movie. We are not just laughing at such silly stylings. We use those styles...but kinda different. And we're definitely not laughing at the idea of how things used to be...in fact, we're pointing out that thinking things have changed much is the real thing we should be laughing about.

That silly ol' dichotomy between "wife-types" and "whore-types" - too bad that dichotomy didn't actually stay in the 50's!

That crazy ol' SSL narrator talking about the 60's/70's sexual revolution not actually being much of a sexual revolution for the female orgasm!

So, I think the cheese in SSL is an unexpected type of cheese. It's not familiar in the documentary genre. It's also just less like the familiar cheese of say, the Simpsons, and tends more towards something much stranger like Tim and Eric Awesome Show - Great Job!

Who doesn't enjoy the cheese of Troy McClure?

Tim and Eric, on the other hand, can get a little weird for some tastes

This is during a musical number called "Petite Feet" which involves..well just google it.

It's not exactly Tim and Eric styling either though. Yes, we have some rainbow unicorns and other weird, cheesy shit, but we certainly don't take anything as far as they do, and the the big difference is the movie itself is not played as a joke in the way cheesy, weird stuff like Tim and Eric or midnight movies are. Science, Sex and the Ladies is a serious movie. The actual information that is being presented is an accurate, cited, well thought-out, and often densely packed argument. It's just there's this very not-serious element in the visual presentation. So, there's a particular mix of the serious and the silly that clearly doesn't fit a mold.

Science, Sex and the Ladies making a point about sprirtual/emotional/non-orgasmic physical pleasure being great and maybe even climactic, but yet still different than an orgasm

The Funbunch! in SSL talking about "Why Ladies Don't Masturbate as Much?"

The other thing that I think worries people with the categorization is that it's kinda sex-ed like, so people immediately start thinking it's for young people. I get that sex ed is something we think of as a teen sort of thing, and I get that adults always tend to think they are already educated, so it wouldn't occur to them that something sex edish is meant for them too. However, the main point in SSL is that we all need to be re-educated. Our whole sexual culture is misinformed about the basics of female sexual release. That means, with all likelihood and to some degree, you are miseducated, I am miseducated, and the expert we read about sexual matters from is too. We all are. So the movie is aimed at sexual researchers, sexual education experts, and grown-ass married people who've had lots of sex and relationships as much, if not more than, it's aimed at teens. So, it includes some sex ed, but it really isn't aimed at kids...this is also very, very confusing to people.

So, let me now lay out how this movie should be categorized. Science, Sex, and the Ladies is an educational video mixed with a midnight movie. I fully realize that these two genres maybe aren't supposed to be mixed, and the description might not create a satisfactory enough box, but it is at least satisfactory to me...for the moment at least.

Because one cannot decide on an audience for a movie until the movie is appropriately categorized, we can now get back to that question. "Who is the audience for this movie?" At first glance this genre mix doesn't help us answer that question in an easily understandable way. Who watches educational videos? Kids. Who watches midnight movies? Cynical adults who tend toward blue comedy. They simply don't mix!

I see it differently though. An education video is for anyone who wants to learn something....so that's hopefully most people. Plus, as I described above, SSL is meant to re-educate everyone who has been immersed in our current sexual culture - which is, again, most people. I take a lighter view of the midnight movie crowd too. Yes, there is lots of sex and violence and really weird shit and ironic watching, but I think all those things come together because they make a fun experience. The way I see it, midnight movies are for anyone who likes going to the movies and simply having a fun, somewhat raucous, communal experience. To me that's exactly the mix that is SSL - it's a movie that is fun as shit to watch - the more people you watch with, the more fun it is. It creates a communal feeling in the audience - like everyone just went on a weird-ass journey together, but it's more than just fun midnight movie fluff. It is informative and thoughtful, and leaves the viewer with more knowledge and understanding of the world than when they came in.

So there you go. If I must give you a particular "type" of audience for Science, Sex and the Ladies, it is people who would go to a screening of The Room, or Rocky Horror, or Grindhouse, but would also rent informative docs like The Corporation or Bigger, Faster, Stronger (Although, honestly, my real answer is a completely and utterly unacceptable one - I think this movie is for everyone).

4.06.2015

It all began 3 minutes after midnight on September 3rd 2013, when HorseCawk created the thread to discuss the "gay chit" that people were posting on FB.

A little background. I googled "Cliteracy 101" a couple days ago and happen to come across a thread on the bodybuilding.com forum about just that...Cliteracy 101. I couldn't help reading the entire thread, and I just really thought you needed to know about it too. These particular body-building folk are what some call miscers. They are people on bodybuilding sites that only post on the miscellaneous non-body-building sections of the site, and they really just post to make the other people laugh or react, so it's usually dumb as shit. It might have enraged me, cause there was a lot of pretty backwards comments, but honestly, who cares. I do think it reflects the underlying current in our culture that keeps us resistant to accepting a realistic understanding of female sexual release, but that's a subject that goes far beyond the shit these dudes were saying. Plus, I was in their space. They didn't take their shitty comments to the source. They kept in their home - their very public home, but home none-the-less.

gay as phuck and says things like "the clitoris is larger than a flaccid penis" women who are into this $hit are just so dense. finding a "cause" and getting behind it!! POwEr in our sexuality! "Penetration Is Not the Only Sex!!" "you shouldn't have to ask a man to rub your clitoris during intercourse!"

He didn't see why anyone would share such things with him.

HorseCawk

DK91 quickly gave HorseCawk props for a strong username (I agree) and a strong post.

I'd like to point out that late in the thread, Nessa1 (1 of 3 women in this thread) came back at HorseCawk with: "You do realize that all of that is correct, right Opie?" to which HorseCawk replied, "its not you stuppid chit.
u are misinformed" Bravo Nessa1 - 5 vuvla rating to you (!)(!)(!)(!)(!)

Quickly, everyone then got a bit riled up by the idea that a clit could be larger than a flaccid penis, retorting with things like richard noggin's "brb pulling on my cawk with pliers" and H34T's "4 inch flaccid checkin in. never seen a 4 inch clit before. also this is why I never would degrade myself by licking a snatch."

However, PoliciaLoco (inquisitive mofo) pipes in with the absolutely correct statement: "Most of a clit isn't visible as it extends into the body..." And then Musik85 quotes some internet lit supporting the whole big clit thing and includes links to more info.

HorseCawk comes back though and tells PoliciaLoco

this is debatable.
the feminist hipsters promoting this "the clitoris so is vast" view are preaching that the labia minora as well as other pussy tissue is "the clitoris"

That big ol' HorseCawk actually has a point here. There are definitely people out there saying that all the "pussy tissue" should be considered "the clit" because it is all important in sexual pleasure. I, as you can imagine, take the side that organs should be called their correct name, because if they are not, it is both confusing and inaccurate, but that's another story. He is off base in this particular discussion though. I mean the clit really does extend inside the body, and it really is at least as big as a flaccid penis, so not actually debatable, HorseCawk.

HorseCawk's comments to Musik85 are a touch less poignant (and probably false on all accounts, although I don't know the status of Musik85's sexuality), saying:

nice scientific source dumbchit
your statements are firstly false.
secondly debatable in scientific literature
and thirdly you are a homosexual.

On a side note Musik85 comes back at him with: "How many clits have you seen exactly? minus your mums on the way out..." To which HorseCawk jovially replies: "lmao" Sadly, Musik85 loses his earlier steely feminist/real-life leanings and finished up the exchange with "Who gives a fuk anyway? gona get mine then get out... don't care if some stupid sloot cums or not." PoliciaLoco loses his way also and concludes his postings on the 2nd page with: "The artist, Sophie Wallace shows her teddies on her tumbler. Just FYI."

There are also randomly distributed comments relating to one of my favorites of the laws - Cliteracy Natural Law # 14 which says "The vaginal orgasm is a myth invented by Freud in 1905" with richard noggin changing the topic as follows:

BushrodButtram gets a bit more investigativey on the subject and writes:

All this "women can't climax from intercourse" stuff is greatly exaggerated and is supposed to delegitimize normal sex. Some proponents basically think that all straight sex is basically unpleasant for women and that men like it that way:

BushrodButtram then links a kinda stream-of-consciousness post from a self-described radical feminist in which she talks about the dichotomy that exists for women about wanting too much or too little Penis-in-Vagina sex and the sense that P-i-V sex is THE only type of sex. (Her whole post is HERE. Granted, it is a too obsessive with terror-of-pregnancy and also too blamey for my taste, and it's written a bit aggressively, but if you shake off all the dirt, it honestly has some thoughtful points....could be good for a future post). Anyway, BushrodButtram is kinda pissed about it and finishes his comment with:

Therefore, from their point of view, of course women should insist on "cliteracy" since women's collective sexual self-interest is best served if men don't want to have intercourse, seeing it as an inferior and ineffective form of sex.

I mean, let's be honest, as lady-gasms go, intercourse is an inferior and ineffective form of sex, but that's neither here nor there. Bushrod clearly has his Buttram in a bunch because the whole issue gives him too much feels. He feels the whole Cliteracy 101 thing comes from some crazy motherfuckers thinking intercourse sucks for women and that men want it to suck for women (and I'm sure Mr. Buttram doesn't actually want sex to suck for Mrs. Buttram - seriously. I really think he doesn't and it is offensive to him to think women would think he does). I hear ya Buttram, I do, but sometimes things must be said that are hard to hear, and we all need to listen - no matter whose fault it is.

Synth1230 chimes in with:

i like how all the slogans are presupposed to make it the man's fault. If you get off on clit stimulation then rub your fuking clit you pleb.
Not to mention that going down on these chicks is impossible cos of the 10 coks theyve taken earlier in the day.

The Quality of Women is going down yet their standards become higher and higher.
If youre a good women ill gladly eat you till the cows come home and rub your clit during penetration but you better give me a blowjob when i tell you to.

vaginal orgasms are infact real or rather orgasms for simple penetration are.

Simplistic as it may be, Synth1230 has a point about rubbing one's fucking clit - I mean just do it, right? But I suspect he may not quite understand how strangely not easy that is to do in real life...I mean sometime our culture can get aggressively anti-clit...ya know? He is likely wrong about how many cocks the average women who asks him to go down on her has had in the 24 hours prior to asking, but I'm not him, so I won't pretend to know his circumstances. If this is true, then yes, I think a shower would be appropriate before any eating out, but it's not technically impossible. Let's be honest here. No one wants the disease of 10 other men's ejaculate on their tongue or the taste of 10 latex condoms. Plus, she's probably dehydrated at this point and would do well to just go home, take some time off and drink some water....although on the other hand, after taking 10 coks in 1 day - and likely not orgasming (cause Cliteracy Law # 14 is actually pretty accurate), doesn't she deserve a good eating out so she can finally get the fuck off? As for orgasms from simple penetration being real, as you know, I stand by the statement that there is no evidence of that being true.

EDcellent let everyone know about his experience too:

*Finger banged a girl and she squirted crew* checking in. Not a single part of her clit was touched that night.

Or any other night.

Thanks EDcellent, and true story. Fingerbanging is actually a pretty good way to get a girl to squirt. It's called an ejaculation, and if the clit wasn't touched, definitely doesn't include an orgasm...but maybe EDcellent's girl isn't into orgasms anyway. To each her own.

LikeAMachine didn't like the idea of saying the vaginal orgasm was a myth either:

A myth? lol ok, right

fukking hipsters rustling jimmies

Two ladies got into the discussion too. Staberella just wanted to get practical:

LOL this is silly. Instead of making a big fukking deal over their man sucking in bed to the world, they should let their partners know what they like in bed. No need to make it public.

It seems she is gently acknowledging that dudes who bang with no clit game suck in bed (even the toughest of body-building chicks like that mouth on that lady junk, am I right?) , but fair enough, Staberella - keep that shit to yourself. 4 vulva rating to Staberella for her subtle insinuation (!)(!)(!)(!).CallMeOniichan was quick to get to the real issue, though, when he replied back to her, "I don't think the artist is into guys." Classic move CallMeOniichan.

and conceptions, well she didn't really care much about all this, but she was a bit better informed than most of the dudes so far about the vaginal orgasm is a myth thing. She says:

I think that claim comes from the belief that the nerves etc of the clitoris extend into the vaginal walls/g-spot, so they're all clitoral orgasms.
No. 4 on the list in one of the pics seems right. I don't get what all the fuss is about.

The Cliteracy Law #4 conceptions speaks of is, "The clitoris is not a button. It is an iceberg" So she's got sense about her in that she's acknowledging that there is an inner, larger part of the clitoris. She's also right that there is a going trend that believes orgasms from penetration are due to the inner legs of the clitoris being stimulated to orgasm during penetration - so that even "vaginal" orgasms are clitoral. However, there is no scientific evidence of orgasm ever actually happening from stimulation inside the vagina, so there isn't really a "vaginal" orgasm to speak of at all, and thus speaking about what causes it is not useful since it doesn't really exist (at least in scientific literature). She gets 4 vulvas (!)(!)(!)(!) on her comment though, cause it's kinda thoughtful at least, and she tried to calm the fire. *No one cared though, I guess, because there were absolutely no comments to what she said.

A few other brave comments worth mentioning...theRealGriNC was just honest:

Does anyone else mess around with the clit or is it just me?
I didn't think it was such a big deal.

Hmmmm. I'll give a final word to richard noggin who added this toward the very end of the 3 page thread:

alright boys lets all just admit it the clitoris is a myth, a made up fairy tale that was conjured up by feminists to scare little boys before bed. Has anyone seen this so called "clit"? no. no one has ever seen one because it doesnt exist.
that dangly thing down there is just the bull**** that feminists are full of trying to escape.

Wait no. I want to give the last word to snowyowl, who actually made a top notch 5 vulva rating post (!) (!) (!) (!) (!). Bravo to him...and he never said anything super ass-holeish....and he had the hottest pic.

snowyowl's avatar

I'd rub my clit all over those abs. Here's his post. It was simply the juxtaposition of the 2 memes below.

4.03.2015

Here's a list of things you can do this very day to gently push the Orgasm Equality Movement forward....(I'm really busy this week at work and I kinda need to make this blog post fast). Enjoy.

1. Masturbate the clit, ya'll! I don't care how you do it; vibrating things, hands, rubbing against the giant Easter Bunny stuffed animal your boyfriend gave you. The more ladygasms happening out there, the better for the cause...cause once you pop, you just can't stop.

2. Say clit at anytime throughout today. It just doesn't get enough air time, and it's like THE organ of sexual pleasure for us. It deserves better. Everyone's always talking about balls and penises and all the slang names for those and putting them in jokes and everyday conversation. But the clit (and honestly, there's not a lot of slang names for the clit, which is another problem. The vagina - plenty of slang, but not the clit). Examples:

Shit! I'm freezing my clit off!

Be careful! You almost punched my clit. (To a friend waving their hands wildly at your waist level)

I'd rub my clit on that.

If I'd have known it was this kind of party, I'da put my clit on the mashed potatoes!

3. Get ate the fuck out today.

4. Make up a slang word for clits.

5. If you are in a public space with friends, slip the word clit in there. It doesn't have to be involved with anything you're talking about. You just want everyone around you to hear the word clit at least once today. We'll call it clitoral marketing. It keeps it present in the mind, and that's important.

6. At bath time - with your kids tonight. use the words clitoris and penis instead of vagina and penis. You could use the word vulva -I'm okay with that too-, but is sounds so much like vagina, and honestly, what's going to be (or you hope going to be) more important to your daughter over the next 12-18 years, her vagina or her clit? The little ones will have plenty of opportunity to hear about vaginas in school, movies, and porn (seriously, they will be seeing porn eventually, so you should probably prepare).

7. Try your best not to fake today.

8. Read over some of Sophia Wallaces Cliteracy 101 signs. She's on Point. Here and Here

9. If you are thinking about leaving your significant other, and they don't listen to you about what you need to orgasm or become aroused, take this last part of the list as a sign that you should definitely move on. Life's too short, people.